


Tea and Questions

by mithrel



Category: Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Blanket Permission, Gen, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-11
Updated: 2011-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mithrel/pseuds/mithrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarah Jane has an old friend over for tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tea and Questions

“We’re having someone over for tea today, Luke,” Sarah Jane announced.

Luke made a face. Whenever his Mum had “someone over for tea” it was either for an article she was writing, in which case he had to keep his mouth shut and act as normal as possible, or else someone she knew from UNIT, in which case he’d be bored out of his mind. “Do I have to dress up?”

She smiled fondly at the complaint. “No. Just be yourself.”

When the bell rang a bit later, Sarah Jane opened the door to reveal a man about her age, curly brown hair going to grey at the temples, wearing some sort of military uniform. It wasn’t a UNIT uniform; Luke had seen enough of those to know what they looked like.

“Harry!” Sarah Jane gave the man a hug, which surprised Luke.

“Hello, old girl.”

Sarah Jane turned her eyes to the ceiling and gave a long-suffering sigh.

“Sorry,” the man said quickly, for no apparent reason. “How have you been?”

“Fine.” She turned to him. “Luke, come over here.”

As he approached, she said, “Harry, this is my son, Luke. Luke, this is an old friend of mine, Dr. Harry Sullivan.”

Dr. Sullivan’s eyes popped. “Your _son?_ ” He peered at Luke. “Sarah, I was over here not eight months ago, and you never mentioned a son. Wait, don’t tell me,” he said angrily. “You got married and divorced, and your ex has custody.”

“Harry, it’s not like that!”

“Isn’t it?”

Luke didn’t know why Dr. Sullivan was so angry, but thought he’d better do something before things got out of control. “I’m an alien.”

Dr. Sullivan stared at him. “You’re a _what?!_ ”

Too late, Luke realized that most people didn’t believe in aliens, and he might have caused more trouble.

“He’s not technically an alien,” Sarah Jane said. “But come in, let’s sit down.”

They went into the sitting room, and she got the tea things together, ignoring everything else. Dr. Sullivan tapped his fingers on the table impatiently the whole time. When the tea had been served at last, he said, “All right, Sarah Jane, why is your son an alien?”

“He’s genetically human, but he was created by a race called the Bane. A few months ago they made an energy drink called Bubble-Shock, made with an enzyme secreted by the Bane Mother, so that she could control everyone who drank it.”

“But what does this have to do with Luke?”

“I’m getting to that. Bubble-Shock didn’t work on everyone. They created Luke and gave him the knowledge of everyone coming through the factory. He was supposed to work out a way to hook the 2% who were immune.”

“ _All_ the people coming into the factory? But there must have been hundreds!”

“Thousands,” Sarah Jane replied. “Anyway, when we stopped the Bane, we had no idea what to do with Luke.”

“So you adopted him?” Dr. Sullivan sounded sceptical.

“Yes!”

Dr. Sullivan held up his hands. “Sorry, old thing.”

This time Sarah Jane glared at him. “ _Harry!_ ”

“Look, I’m sorry! It’s habit!”

“One I never approved of, and after more than thirty years you’d think you’d have stopped. I think you do it on purpose just to annoy me!”

Dr. Sullivan looked indignant. “I do not!”

“How’d you and my mum meet, Dr. Sullivan?” Luke asked, trying to defuse things again.

“Harry, please, Luke,” he said, then continued. “That’s rather a long story. Has she told you about the Doctor?”

He nodded.

“Well, I first met him after he’d regenerated. I was working for UNIT, and they assigned me to keep him from overexerting himself–”

“Which is impossible,” Sarah Jane broke in.

“You’re telling me!” Harry said ruefully. “Skipping ropes, for Pete’s sake!”

Sarah Jane giggled. “I wish I could have seen that. It sounds so undignified.”

Neither of them elaborated. “Anyway, the plans for a disintegrator gun were stolen, and several people were killed. It turned out a scientist had created a robot, and some crackpot organization was using it to steal the activation codes for the nuclear warheads in several countries.’

“Why?” Luke wanted to know.

Harry shrugged. “They were going to threaten to detonate them unless they were put in charge. We managed to stop them using a metal virus after the robot’s creator was killed.”

“After that the Doctor decided to take Harry travelling with us.”

“I don’t think he actually meant to. We were only going to go to the moon.” Harry looked at Luke. “I didn’t believe they could actually travel in the TARDIS.”

“So you’ve been to the moon?” Luke asked excitedly

He smiled grimly. “Actually no. First we ended up on a space station full of people in suspended animation that had been invaded. After that we ran into Sontarans, then Daleks. By the time we got a call from the Brigadier that there was an emergency in Scotland I was ready to go home, and the Doctor was more than ready for me to leave.”

“That’s not true!” Sarah Jane protested. “He was quite fond of you!”

“He called me an imbecile!”

Sarah Jane had no answer to that. “Sarah, my idea of adventure is a murder mystery. I don’t want to have to deal with actual murders, nor people trying to murder me.”

She made a face. “Anyway, when the Doctor dropped me off, he made a slight miscalculation.”

“You ended up in Aberdeen!” he protested.

“At least I was on the right planet, on the right continent, at the right time. I could have ended up in Australia in the 1700s.”

“So she had hardly any money, and was stranded nearly six hundred miles from home,” Harry continued, ignoring her. “So of course she called good old reliable Harry Sullivan.” There was pain on his face as he said this, and Luke didn’t know why.

“And you came and got me. Thank you.”

“Well I couldn’t very well leave you there!” Harry said indignantly.

“Of course not,” Sarah Jane said, smiling at him fondly.

“Anyway, I’d better be going. Thanks for the tea, Sarah,” he said, getting up.

“Anytime.”

At the door, Harry held out his hand. “Nice to have met you, Luke.”

Luke shook it, then watched in surprise as Harry kissed his mum on the cheek. The strangest thing was that she didn’t seem to mind. “Until next time.”

“Nice to see you again, Harry.”

After he’d left, Sarah Jane sighed.

“Mum?”

“Yes, Luke?”

“Why does Harry look at you like that?”

Sarah Jane looked surprised. “Like what?”

“Like he’s hurting.”

She looked surprised again, but answered. “I never wanted to get married, or have a family. I wanted to be independent, to have a career. I never imagined myself having children.” She smiled at him. “Harry was always…old-fashioned, one might say. When we were travelling together he was always trying to help me, which I neither wanted nor needed. After I got back, he proposed to me.”

“Why didn’t you say yes? Don’t you like him?”

“Of course I like him! But not the way I’d need to to marry him.” She saw his confusion. “I like him the way I like you and Maria and Clyde. He’s like a brother to me.” She paused, gazing into the distance. “I don’t know why he stuck around, after that, but he’s never mentioned it again. That’s why he got so angry when he first met you.”

“Why?”

“Because he thought I’d married someone else. As long as I hadn’t married anyone he was fine, but if I’d married someone else it would have meant there was something wrong with him.” She saw that he still didn’t understand. “Well, never mind that.”

“So you don’t want to marry him?”

“No. He’s a good man and I love him dearly, but we’d kill each other. You saw how we were just over tea.”

Luke nodded. “Does he come over often?”

“Every few months. He works for NATO now, so he’s busy.”

“I’d like to see him again.” Luke suddenly thought of something he’d been wondering about. “Skipping ropes?”

His mum laughed. “I’ll tell you someday.”


End file.
